Boyle, whose art theft thriller Trance hit cinemas earlier this year, will base his new project on the film Smash and Grab: The Story of the Pink Panthers. Havana Marking's documentary centres on a crew of Balkan thieves who became notorious over more than a decade of activity. Reviewing the film in the Guardian last month, critic Mike McCahill described it as a documentary which "pursues its subject from multiple angles, quizzing reporters, cops and sometime gang members, while carefully marshalled archive frames a deeper sociopolitical inquiry".

Marking's film should give Boyle and his regular producer partner Christian Colson plenty to work with. It features genuine CCTV footage and interviews with members of the Pink Panthers, who are estimated to have pulled off heists worth more than $500m in Dubai, Switzerland, Japan, France, Liechtenstein, Germany, Luxembourg, Spain and Monaco.

The gang, which is believed to be several hundred members strong, picked up their flamboyant moniker after hiding a diamond worth more than £500,000 in a jar of face cream during a raid on a Mayfair jewellers in 1993. The tactic mimicked a heist seen in the 1975 Peter Sellers film The Return of the Pink Panther.

Boyle's adaptation is at an early stage of production but will be set up at his regular studio Fox Searchlight, Pathe, and his own unit Cloud Eight Films.

Trainspotting, the saga of a bunch of junkies cutting a swath through Edinburgh, became an instant classic of British cinema. Nearly 20 years later, director Danny Boyle talks to Hibrow about what inspired him